Mark Spencer writes "While on a vacation in Turkey, I happened by a magazine stand and saw the Turkish magazine CHIP for August or September (couldn't tell, since it was dark) had the "HIT" Slackware 3.5 on CD with it. Turkey not only has its own users' group but even it's own distribution, Turkuaz. So, now in addition to delicious Turkish coffee, sensual Turkish baths, there is indeed Turkish linux. "

The submittor par excellence Hetz Ben Amo found a very thought provoking article over at Zdnet. Interesting stuff, and makes me right and properly paranoid.

Paul Dietz wrote in to inform the masses that Linus has posted yet another kernel in his very popular 2.1 series. It can be downloaded from the usual place. It probably can be downloaded from unusual places as well, but what do I know?

Alf Dagfinn Lynegard writes "On The University of Oslos (Norway) campus some Apple ppl put one iMac balloon over our math auditorium and last night some unknown linux-fans made up a Tux poster over the screen of the iMac balloon last night or this morning. (1998-09-04)." The shots are here and here. All I can say is hahahaha. We are definitley going to need mirrors for these shots.

Emperor Zog writes "After many moons, Electrogig's web site (www.gig.nl) is back online. They are offering their high-end 3DGO modeler/renderer and Gig Viz CAD software for Linux, for the bargain price of $995! 3DGO is simply the most powerful 3D package available on Linux today, and it's good to see that Electrogig's back. Unfortunately, they don't have the downloadable trial versions back online yet, but you can at least look at the pretty pictures or send them a congratulatory e-mail. Check out the benchmarks page; Linux-Intel kicks some SGI butt! " Looks like the demos are now online-go /. 'em...

India's Express Computer is carrying an article about preinstalled Linux for sub-$600 computers. They mention that "In the United States, many big systems vendors, as a part of their sub-$600 PC campaign are bundling Linux as the operating system."Does anybody know to whom he is referring? Thanks to Linux Reviews and Articles for the reference.

Red Hat Software has won another award. This time RedHat Linux 5.1 receives the Editor's Choice award from the Australian Computer Magazine. Check out the press release for further details.

Zippy writes "A couple weeks back on REX Rumor Central Linux developers were putting the pressure on Philippe Kahn, who created REX PDA. Have you ever seen a REX? It's a PDA on a thin PCMCIA card, with a full screen! No input method, so you have to synch with a PC, but until now it didn't support Linux. Well, the pressure has paid off! Philippe wrote a message offering a preview SDK to developers who want to make Linux synchronization or other tools for REX. Most excellent indeed. "

Thomas Muldowney writes "The KDE folks have released static KOffice binaries for download. They are unsupported but worth a look. Details on how to obtain and install KOffice binaries are available here "

Politas writes "Australian Personal Computer Magazine has run a comparison of linux distribs as one of their reviews this month. " They rank Red Hat as Editors Choice (no surprise) and call Debian the "Most Promising". Lots of stuff over there, but the best part is a clear discussion fo what a distribution is. This link is one for the FAQ files.

Software Magazine has a very positive editorial about Linux and devotes its cover article to Linux. It's interesting to see how weak the counter arguments to use NT or a proprietary Unix appear. It's also good to see the snotty-14-year-old myth being dispelled. I expect the Linux community has a higher ratio of PhD's/highly educated people per head of population than Microsoft does itself... Thanks to Linux Weekly News for the second reference.

Brad Glonka of LinuxCentral wrote in to plug the new version of those crazy LCD Display things that we plugged awhile back. They're 2 or 4 row LCD display panels, and the excellent LCDProc program allows you to display load and other useful tidbits. Ideal for boxes without monitors, or just goofing with. The new version comes with all the necessary parts to mount it in a 5.25" drive bay without any hassle.

rick-o writes "The current issue of Software Magazine arrived to me at work today with a cover story on Linux. Featuring incredibly bad photos of Linus and Eric (and a photo of RMS that seems to be missing from the online version), the article doesn't really say much that's new, but it's still good press. "

Hetz Ben Amo sent this link my way and daywalker also wrote "It appears that Dan Shaffer of "Project Heresy" fame will be covering be covering Linux news once a week in their CNET Radio webcast... Check out the good stuff "We'll be covering Linux news & views every Thursday in CNET Radio's 1:00 p.m. PT webcast, starting September 3. You can also catch each episode on-demand from this page." "

Joe Hamelin writes "S.u.S.E. 5.3 is now out. Get it at suse.org, the Seattle Mirror. Lots of new X config stuff and gimp 1.0 in the release. S.u.S.E. has been so easy to install and maintain that I hesitate to switch. It's reliable too.. all slashdot gifs are served from a S.u.S.E. box. " Last time I tried S.u.S.E, the install seemed a little wierd, but I think I might try it again soon. Anyway, S.u.S.E's official web site is here, and if any of the S.u.S.E folks are reading this, what the heck is zuse.suse.de?

Sean writes "Computerworld has an article about the introduction of freeware (Linux and Apache) to enterprise computing. " As usual it shows that people who don't know rely on reputation rather than trying to educate themselves. On the other hand Linux is gaining a good reputation...

The prolific Hetz Ben Hamo sent in the attached press release, and plea for writings to Insignia. As we have heard some bigger companies have begun a flirtation with the wonderful world of Linux. But Insignia as a company, and as others have shown, they need to know that there is a paying market there. So, if you are interested in SoftWindows for Linux, read below to find out how to help.

Colin Walsh writes "The Babylon Project aims to become a standard development platform for computer games (and possibly other software in the future) allowing the developer to make one executable that can run on any x86 based microprocessor, regardless of operating system (thus freeing the developer to concentrate on developing the GAME, and not having to worry about platform specific problems). In fact, given time, the Babylon Project could conceivably allow a game to be run on virtually any processor that supports the Linux kernel."

Our sister publication Freshmeat has another LSB editorial. This one emphasizes the need for tests of standard APIs (something with which I would agree), but also appears to advocate the same level of compatibility as in the DOS world... Although compatibility is nice, it is not some Holy Grail. Microsoft is killing ISA, DOS, and eventually Win16 because it's a mighty pain to keep things compatible. A better solution seems to me to be a strong spec, but also open source code to avoid the need for legacy API horrors are needed to keep binary compatibility.

Patrick Aland sent this story from MSNBC about Linux. The story itself is a well-written one, talking about some of things we already know: about how wonderful Linux is and how all it needs is one great application and nothing will stop it. I dunno, I think that the Gimp does a good job, but what do I know?